Marc Mac Presents Visioneers – Dirty Old Hip Hop

4 more tracks on the cd than the vinyl!! 

You can’t move forward without looking back, and Marc Mac has done exactly that with ‘Dirty Old Hip Hop’ – the long awaited Visioneers album that pays homage to the golden age of hip hop, and to soul/jazz/groove innovators Quincy Jones, Isaac Hayes and the Mizell Bros to name but a few.

For the first reason to add this LP to your collection, look no further than track 1, featuring LA’s Voice rapping with a warm nostalgic feel about listening to tapes back in the day –  ‘I never thought when it was played way back, that it would ever get remade in fact, in a new way, a catalyst for a good day, streaming from my backpack..’  The second guest rapper is Capitol A who takes it back once again to the days of the boombox with old school rhymes over a block party vibe on ‘Funkbox’. 

Hip hop collides with jazz on two superb instrumental versions of 90s classics by the Pharcyde and Nas, the latter with a wicked vibes section – and if you didn’t get one of those limited ‘Runnin’ 7s, here’s your chance.  ‘Dirty Old Bossa Nova’ is a great cover of the Howard Roberts tune of the same name, also used by Tribe on ‘Jam’, and ‘Ike’s Mood I’ is of course a lovely beefed up version of the Isaac Hayes classic.  The album is rounded of with some sublime, live sounding jazz cuts (sans excess noodles).  This will be a great summer soundtrack, should it ever arrive.

While ‘How About A Game Of Chess?’ surely had its moments, this feels like a more rounded, complete album.  Mr Mac has definitely achieved his goal of putting jazz back into the hands of the hip hoppers.  Word.